Timothy C. Cook

Cook Law & ADR, PLLC

Duluth, Minnesota 55802

651-340-5210

Commercial, Construction, Contract, Employment, Foreclosure, Insurance, Mechanic Liens, Partnership Disputes, Property/Casualty, Real Estate


Cook Law & ADR, PLLC is a Minnesota-based law firm established in 2015 by Timothy C. Cook, an attorney with over thirty years of experience across several fields of legal discipline, most notably in the construction, surety, real estate, business, employment, and insurance fields. With his extensive experience and reasoned range of knowledge, Tim Cook will deliver efficient and effective services tailored to address all of your legal needs and concerns. Moreover, if Cook Law cannot help you, it will likely be able to refer you to attorneys and law firms who can.

Tim Cook's commitments to people, quality, and integrity run deep. This is perhaps best evidenced by the fact that, until forming Cook Law & ADR, his entire legal career was spent with only two firms. The first nearly twenty years of Tim's career was spent at Moore, Costello, & Hart, a Saint Paul-based firm that housed some of the best attorneys in all of the Midwest. Shortly after the turn of the century, for reasons no longer important, Tim joined the law firm of Hammargren & Meyer, PLLC, a Minneapolis boutique firm that was suited to Tim's philosophy and that had a small but solid fleet of skilled attorneys. With both firms now deceased, Tim considered a range of options that stretched before him. These included a return to big city lawyer life, taking to the lecture and teaching circuits, ramping up his "life coaching" game, going back to the farm, or simply plowing any number of other fields of opportunity. Instead, fueled by a pedigree that includes many successful friends and family who are living both happy and well in the world of small firm law practices, Tim decided to follow his lifelong dream and made the tough but sound decision to hang a shingle rather than to simply follow the herd. From all of this is born Cook Law & ADR, PLLC.

Over the years, Cook Law & ADR's clients have included virtually all players in the construction industry. Whether contractors, subcontractors, specialty trade contractors, suppliers, public and private owners, residential property owners, design professionals, sureties, and insurers, all have found comfort and value with Tim's guiding hands. He assists clients on all aspects of the construction process on projects of all sizes, public or private. Tim also represents businesses and individuals on a range of other matters, including those relating to business formation and disputes, real estate matters, employment issues, insurance and bond claims, and other matters of concern. As one of the last great Renaissance attorneys, Tim can also competently advise on a range of other matters running from the simple to the sublime.

Most notably, Tim Cook is well trained and long committed to providing clients, parties, and their legal counsel with a range of alternate dispute resolution (ADR) services to help them resolve legal disputes promptly, fairly, and efficiently and in a process that best allows them to make their own decisions rather than to have them made by others, in often confusing and always expensive arenas. Tim is in increasingly high demand as a skilled and successful mediator in a wide range of construction, real estate,  business, employment, and personal disputes.  As both a mediator and as an arbitrator, Tim has a solid reputation for fairly and efficiently reviewing the evidence and being willing and able to make a fair assessment. As an arbitrator, Tim makes the tough decisions with a reasoned eye focused on the evidence, not on the parties. Truth be told, Tim really does not have many friends. As such, his ability to evaluate the record and the evidence on their merits, and not on fishing trips and other industry junkets with parties or attorneys, makes him an ideal candidate for selection as a neutral in virtually all formats of alternate dispute resolution. He has mediated over 1100 matters, a solid percentage of them successfully. He has arbitrated a wide number of matters as well on a range of issues. His demeanor, knowledge, experience, and tender hand make him well suited to assisting combatants in seeking and finding resolution.

Cook Law & ADR can and will advise you and help you chart a plan to avoid future problems often found in both contract and the law. When you find yourself in times of trouble, Cook Law will bring its thirty years of experience in state and federal trial courts, and in private arbitration forums, to advocate on your behalf and, when necessary, take your matter to and through trial and appeal. At all times, Cook Law will keep your interests front and center. It will work with you and those with whom you are at odds to see alternative ways to resolve your dispute so that you can, hopefully, avoid the high cost of litigation. And, when your situations call for the guidance of lawyers and firms who are smarter, more experienced, or who have a bigger store of gun powder for a really big fight, Cook Law & ADR will help you find the fit that is best for you.

To learn more about Tim Cook, click here
 Cook Law & ADR is committed to assisting clients on a reasoned range of legal issues, litigation needs, and resolving matters reasonably, quickly, and efficiently. With over thirty years of legal experience, and having secured long and well-established working relationships with trade associations, expert consultants, attorneys, and law firms located in Minnesota, North Dakota, the Upper Midwest, and across the country, Cook Law & ADR will counsel you in evaluating your particular situation, concerns, and needs. If we are unable to provide you with the legal or ADR assistance that you need, Cook Law will help you secure competent legal counsel and other qualified ADR specialists to assist you.

Retaining a lawyer is a big decision and a big deal. At Cook Law & ADR, we are committed to avoid appearing like dogs on a bone when potential clients in search of an attorney come through our doors or give us a call. We understand that our time is your money and that your money does not always need to be spent on things collateral or ultimately unimportant to advancing your legal matter to final resolution. We will carefully discuss and explain options with you before embarking on a course of action. We will be sensitive to the practical and economic value of your matter before engaging in war or motion practice battle. Sometimes, significant legal expense is simply unavoidable. When so, we'll tell you so. Other times, there are forks in the road where the better traveled route lies more favorably in your interests, not ours. We'll take you down those roads whenever and wherever possible, after first discussing your reasonable range of options with you.

Finding the right mediator or arbitrator for you is also important.There are many fine ADR specialists on the horizon. At Cook Law & ADR, we commit to efficiently learning about the necessary details of your dispute, including most importantly the key facts and applicable laws. We will listen earnestly, and with compassion and understanding. We will let you pound the table and will hand you the crying towel. Then we will do our best to bring you, and your adversaries, down to earth so that you can reach the common ground where resolution is found. We will do so as quickly and efficiently as the process will allow. We'll spare you our war stories and wasting your time on on collateral matters, unless they are reasonably necessary to help you find a grip. We will declare an impasse when it becomes obvious that your matter cannot resolve, or if it is just plain "too early" to resolve. We commit to following up with you and your legal counsel after an apparent impasse has been reached in a last ditch effort to reach a deal after the taillights hit the hill. We are frank, earnest, and sometimes downright stubborn because we know that, in the large majority of disputes, a deal at mediation lies in your best interests. In arbitration, we'll be courteous, fair, and forthright. We'll give you value for your dollar, as prompt of a decision as the process may allow, and we'll explain for you how and why we made the decision that we did. We will also travel, largely on our dime, to your office, city, or town to conduct your mediation or to provide you ADR services.

Hey, talk to several lawyers and ADR candidates if you wish. Be sure you are comfortable with whomever you decide to retain. If you do engage an attorney, whether it be Cook Law & ADR or anyone else, remember that you are the client and that Cook Law & ADR or other lawyers and law firms are to serve you and your interests. Read and understand your fee agreement letters before you sign them. These letters are contracts just like any other contract. Ask questions. Negotiate terms. Consult others if and as need be. Be clear on lines of communication, who is doing what, the costs to be incurred, and that you wish to be consulted before significant waves of legal action are pursued in your name and out of your purse. Cook Law is always happy to assist you in negotiating the contract that you are about to sign with anyone, in most any walk of life, for most anything. Sound contracts can protect you from the sea of uncertainty that is often found in litigation.

Contact Cook Law today to learn how we can apply our years of experience and legal skills to best position you for a reasonable and prompt resolution of your travel through the sometimes confusing and mostly aggravating legal minefields that may lie ahead.
1700 Highway 36 West, Suite 580
Saint Paul, MN 55113

P: 651-340-5210
F: 218-600-3298
E: [email protected]